Guest Blogger

Many of us on the World Poker Tour crew fondly refer to Foxwoods as the ninth level of hell. There is just something about the place that's off. It could be the employee dining room, which would benefit from 52 cases of nicorette gum for every single employee who makes the place their personal ash tray. The enormous place encompasses the better part of Connecticut, and I'm pretty sure it employs the entire state of Rhode Island, so it takes about twenty minutes to get to the tournament area and a half-hour to the poker room. In addition to these minor complaints, the real reason we have so dubiously nicknamed the world's largest casino is due to the growing conspiracy theory that they pump the place full of more pure oxygen than the MIR space station.

Knuckles start to crack and bleed, legs start to itch uncontrollably, and you drink water all day and still manage to be dehydrated at night. My face looked like "Ashy Larry" from the Chappelle Show one morning. Oh, and one last thing, YOU CAN'T FALL ASLLEP FOR YOUR LIFE! I spent 12 hours of my life this past week trying to fall asleep. When I wasn't contemplating suicide during that time I managed to watch three episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm, five episodes of Seinfeld, listen to the musical scores for Braveheart, Glory, Amadeus, and three chapters of Fahrenheit 451 on audio book (I could keep going here, and I'm not joking). I tossed, and I turned, and I counted sheep, when Foxwoods really wanted me downstairs attempting to count cards.

One good thing about the week came in the form of a free rock show put on by Foghat. The tournament was on dinner break for day 5 and I was walking back up to my room to catch a nap (what was I thinking). I got off the elevator on the casino floor and my ears immediately perked up at the distant blaring of guitars, bass, and drums. I wandered in and low and behold my timing was perfect, "Slow Ride" was the second song they played. In my opinion, it is one of the top ten rock songs of all time, so I was stoked. I returned to work and told Tony Berns, "I left here sick and expecting to take a nap, I ended up at a rock concert, kind of the same, but totally different."

Slow Ride could have also been the title for the last two days of the tournament. When you have calculating professionals like Allen Kessler and Ted Lawson trying to push the action against an amateur with a huge chip stack, who plays tighter than a cable holding up the Golden Gate Bridge, things will take a while. And they did. The chip leader in question, Rajendra Patel, checked down a full house and folded A-Q suited to a small stack all-in push. I have never seen Linda Johnson get impatient with conservative play at a final table, but this event broke all the rules. It was especially cute when Raj and Paul Matteo checked a board all the way down head's-up, and each player held an ace in his hand, Great poker! I'm pretty sure that Mike Sexton, Joe Sebok, and Gavin Smith all wanted to run down to the final table and strangle players at the final table. Sebok showed us some text messages between Gavin and himself that confirmed as much as the final droned on in the background.

I don't know if you'll want to watch this one on the Travel Channel. When the table ended I said, "Poker just took six steps backwards." Then I thought to myself for a moment, this show may single-handedly inspire thousands of more donkeys everywhere to step into card rooms around the country. In that case, "May all your draws be live, and your pots be monsters!"

Ryan "Force" Lucchesi
force@wisehandpoker.com